American Sociological Review 78(3)

American Sociological Review, June 2013: Volume 78, Issue 3

Social Isolation in America: An Artifact
Anthony Paik and Kenneth Sanchagrin

This article examines whether existing estimates of network size and social isolation, drawn from egocentric name generators across several representative samples, suffer from systematic biases linked to interviewers. Using several analytic approaches, we find that estimates of network size found in the 2004 and 2010 General Social Surveys (GSS), as well as other representative samples, were affected by significant interviewer effects. Across these surveys, we find a negative correlation between interviewer effects and mean network size. In the 2004 GSS, levels of social connectivity are strongly linked to interviewer-level variation and reflect the fact that some interviewers obtained highly improbable levels of social isolation. In the 2010 GSS, we observe larger interviewer effects in two versions of the questionnaire in which training and fatigue effects among interviewers were more likely. Results support the argument that many estimates of social connectivity are biased by interviewer effects. Some interviewers’ failure to elicit network data makes inferences, such as the argument that networks have become smaller, an artifact. Overall, this study highlights the importance of interviewer effects for network data collection and raises questions about other survey items with similar issues.

The Capitalist Machine: Computerization, Workers’ Power, and the Decline in Labor’s Share within U.S. Industries
Tali Kristal

This article addresses an important trend in contemporary income inequality—a decline in labor’s share of national income and a rise in capitalists’ profits share. Since the late 1970s, labor’s share declined by 6 percent across the U.S. private sector. As I will show, this overall decline was due to a large decline (5 to 14 percent) in construction, manufacturing, and transportation combined with an increase, albeit small (2 to 5 percent), in labor’s share within finance and services industries. To explain the overall decline and the diverse trends across industries, I argue that the main factor leading to the decline in labor’s share was the erosion in workers’ positional power, and this erosion was partly an outcome of class-biased technological change, namely computerization that favored employers over most employees. I combine data from several sources to test for the independent effects of workers’ positional power indicators (i.e., unionization, capital concentration, import penetration, and unemployment) and the direct and indirect effects of computer technology on changes in labor’s share within 43 nonagricultural private industries and 451 manufacturing industries between 1969 and 2007. Results from error correction models with fixed-effect estimators support the study’s arguments.

The Care Economy? Gender, Economic Restructuring, and Job Polarization in the U.S. Labor Market
Rachel E. Dwyer

The U.S. job structure became increasingly polarized at the turn of the twenty-first century as high- and low-wage jobs grew strongly and many middle-wage jobs declined. Prior research on the sources of uneven job growth that focuses on technological change and weakening labor market institutions struggles to explain crucial features of job polarization, especially the growth of low-wage jobs and gender and racial differences in job growth. I argue that theories of the rise of care work in the U.S. economy explain key dynamics of job polarization—including robust growth at the bottom of the labor market and gender and racial differences in job growth—better than the alternative theories. By seeing care work as a distinctive form of labor, care work theories highlight different dimensions of economic restructuring than are emphasized in prior research on job polarization. I show that care work jobs contributed significantly and increasingly to job polarization from 1983 to 2007, growing at the top and bottom of the job structure but not at all in the middle. I close by considering whether the care economy will continue to reinforce job polarization, or whether it will provide new opportunities for revived growth in middle-wage jobs.

The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence
Andrew V. Papachristos, David M. Hureau, and Anthony A. Braga

Nearly a century of empirical research examines how neighborhood properties influence a host of phenomena such as crime, poverty, health, civic engagement, immigration, and economic inequality. Theoretically bundled within these neighborhood effects are institutions’ and actors’ social networks that are the foundation of other neighborhood-level processes such as social control, mobilization, and cultural assimilation. Yet, despite such long-standing theoretical links between neighborhoods and social networks, empirical research rarely considers or measures dimensions of geography and social network mechanisms simultaneously. The present study seeks to fill this gap by analyzing how both geography and social networks influence an important social problem in urban America: gang violence. Using detailed data on fatal and non-fatal shootings, we examine effects of geographic proximity, organizational memory, and additional group processes (e.g., reciprocity, transitivity, and status seeking) on gang violence in Chicago and Boston. Results show adjacency of gang turf and prior conflict between gangs are strong predictors of subsequent gang violence. Furthermore, important network processes, including reciprocity and status seeking, also contribute to observed patterns of gang violence. In fact, we find that these spatial and network processes mediate racial effects, suggesting the primacy of place and the group in generating gang violence.

Gender and Twenty-First-Century Corporate Crime: Female Involvement and the Gender Gap in Enron-Era Corporate Frauds
Darrell J. Steffensmeier, Jennifer Schwartz, and Michael Roche

We extend the scarce research on corporate crime to include gender by developing and testing a gendered focal concerns and crime opportunities framework that predicts minimal and marginal female involvement in corporate criminal networks. Lacking centralized information, we developed a rich database covering 83 corporate frauds involving 436 defendants. We extracted information from indictments and secondary sources on corporate conspiracy networks (e.g., co-conspirator roles, company positions, and distribution of profit). Findings support the gendered paradigm. Typically, women were not part of conspiracy groups. When women were involved, they had more minor roles and made less profit than their male co-conspirators. Two main pathways defined female involvement: relational (close personal relationship with a main male co-conspirator) and utility (occupied a financial-gateway corporate position). Paralleling gendered labor market segmentation processes that limit and shape women’s entry into economic roles, sex segregation in corporate criminality is pervasive, suggesting only subtle shifts in gender socialization and women’s opportunities for significant white-collar crimes. Our findings do not comport with images of highly placed or powerful white-collar female criminals.

Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?
Alexandra Killewald and Margaret Gough

Married men’s wage premium is often attributed to within-household specialization: men can devote more effort to wage-earning when their wives assume responsibility for household labor. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of the specialization hypothesis, arguing that, if specialization causes the male marriage premium, married women should experience wage losses. Furthermore, specialization by married parents should augment the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium for married as compared to unmarried parents. Using fixed-effects models and data from the NLSY79, we estimate within-gender differences in wages according to marital status and between-gender differences in the associations between marital status and wages. We then test whether specialization on time use, job traits, and tenure accounts for the observed associations. Results for women do not support the specialization hypothesis. Childless men and women both receive a marriage premium. Marriage augments the fatherhood premium but not the motherhood penalty. Changes in own and spousal employment hours, job traits, and tenure appear to benefit both married men and women, although men benefit more. Marriage changes men’s labor market behavior in ways that augment wages, but these changes do not appear to occur at the expense of women’s wages.

The Shadow of Indebtedness: Bridewealth and Norms Constraining Female Reproductive Autonomy
Christine Horne, F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo, and Naa Dodua Dodoo

Bridewealth is fundamental to marriage in Africa. Anthropological research provides substantial information regarding characteristics of the bridewealth transaction, but scholars and policymakers know little about its consequences for women in contemporary Africa. We argue that the payment of bridewealth strengthens normative constraints on women’s autonomy in the reproductive domain. We test and find support for our argument using a unique vignette experiment conducted with rural women in the Volta Region of Ghana.